W ith his best straight face, actor Ryan Gosling said: “I never felt more like Janet Leigh in my
life.”

Derek Cianfrance, who has known Gosling for seven years and directed him in two films, added: “
You have a nice figure, like she does.”

“The hair,” Gosling countered — “that’s why I went platinum.”

The two men were recently slumped on a sofa, their feet up on a coffee table, in a suite at the
Waldorf-Astoria, evidently happy to reprise the bantering double act they honed while promoting the
acclaimed 2010 indie drama
Blue Valentine.

Speaking of their second film together,
The Place Beyond the Pines (due on Friday in central Ohio theaters), they weren’t exactly
finishing each other’s sentences but had clearly settled into a rhythm.

Cianfrance, 39, spoke with passion; Gosling, 32, listened and smiled.

The Place Beyond the Pines, a triptych of related stories, begins with the faintly
mythical tale of Luke (Gosling), a nomadic motorcycle stunt rider who rolls back into an upstate
New York town and re-connects with the mother of his child (Eva Mendes, with whom Gosling has been
romantically linked since the shoot). The second segment follows Avery (Bradley Cooper), a police
officer struggling to escape the shadow of his father, a politician. The third explores the
aftermath of the event that links Luke and Avery, revisiting some of the characters 15 years
later.

Pines received mixed reviews in September when it played at the Toronto International Film
Festival.

Each story within the film concerns fatherhood and the burden of legacy.

“It’s the idea of trying to avoid something and ending up colliding into it,” Cianfrance said. “
Luke is trying to avoid his son growing up without a father. Avery is trying to avoid being his
father’s son. Every character in the film deals with that.”

Despite his departure partway into the film, the Gosling character looms over the rest.“Ryan is
playing the legend that the movie’s built around,” Cianfrance said. “Whoever I cast as Avery had to
be the flip side.”

He knew that Cooper was right for the part when he met him and detected an edge of unease
beneath the surface.

“I could see this storm inside of him, like a pot of boiling water with a lid on it,” Cianfrance
said. “I wrote the role for Bradley to play with that — a guy who’s paraded around as a hero but
inside feels corrupted.”

Gosling, by contrast, plays someone whose scars are more conspicuous.

“I was trying to create a portrait of somebody who had made a lifetime of bad decisions,” he
said, “and tattoos were the best way.”

In experimenting with (temporary) tattoos, he went a bit overboard.

“I had no restraint,” Gosling said. “They were crawling up toward my face.”

After one regrettable choice — an exclamation mark under his eye — he told Cianfrance he wanted
it removed before filming.“Derek said, ‘Well, this movie is about consequences.’ ”

As mortifying as it was, the tattoo served its purpose.

“I felt this shame that in a way became the foundation of the character.”

Luke’s newfound fatherhood inspires a sense of responsibility, which, paradoxically, compels him
to a life of crime.

“When I look at the movie,” Gosling added, “I see this melting pot of all these masculine
cliches: motorcycles, muscles, tattoos, guns. And yet when faced with this mirror, which is his
child, he sees that none of those things make you a man.”

For
Blue Valentine, Cianfrance had Gosling and Michelle Williams live together for a month in
what would be their characters’ marital home.

For
Pines, he again wanted to “put the actors in an aquarium of real life,” he said.

They shot in police precincts and used actual tellers for bank robberies. Cianfrance modeled
chase and getaway scenes after rough-and-tumble reality shows such as
Cops.

The Place Beyond the Pines continues the unexpected run of tough-guy roles for Gosling,
previously known for sensitive romances and indie dramas.

Later this year, he will make his directing debut with
How To Catch a Monster — starring Mendes and Christina Hendricks, his
Drive co-star. It was inspired by a
Drive screening at the Cannes Film Festival in France.